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"THERE are so many stupid people!" has been the burden of recent comment from every side since the results of the intelligence tests applied to the army became public property. Can democracy survive, let alone flourish, asks Cornelia James Cannon in The Atlantic, with twenty-two per cent of our citizens of "inferior intelligence?" H. L. Mencken in the Baltimore Sun, by misquoting this writer, gleefully reaches the astonishing conclusion that all his previous estimates of American stupidity were too low, since official figures prove that over 47 per cent of the white draft, and an even larger per cent of the negroes, are feeble-minded. The New York Times editorially quotes a state commissioner of education to the same effect, while Collier's optimistically points to the 53 per cent who are not mentally deficient. But if this be all, we may well despair of democracy.

A veritable swarm of mental tests has followed the successful application of intelligence tests in the army. Psychologists and pseudo-psychologists of all grades of ability and of none contributed to this swarm. You had only to open your Sunday newspaper to find a new test to try out on the members of your family, or an account of the newest prodigy to solve all the problems. The technical journals of psychology were scarcely less forward. In school and industry there was a positive boom in intelligence tests. Of late this sort of thing has somewhat fallen off, but its place has been taken by more or less serious efforts to interpret the monumental data obtained from the examination of one and three-quarter million soldiers.

After all this storm and stress, has not the time arrived for the still, small voice? Tests weathered the period of irrational criticism and, not wholly unscathed, came through the period of hurried application. Yet if test results continue to be taken at their face value, their proponents may have to cry "save us from our friends." The critics are so appreciative of the significance of the army tests that the duty of taking them to task for misleading deductions is peculiarly ungrateful. But neither psychology nor the social sciences can permanently benefit from an injudicious use of the data yielded by this epoch-making experiment in human measurement and selection.

What "Inferiority" Means

The apparently large per cent of army recruits of "inferior intelligence" is simply enough explained. The average person, as F. P. A. points out, is considerably above the average. Now for statisticians, who are matter of fact individuals, this will not do; "average" means the attainment of those who are half way between the top and the bottom. Similarly with "superior " and "inferior." Without the slightest reference to absolute standards (which in the matter of intelligence do not exist), the army psychologists simply dubbed "inferior" that fifth (roughly) of all the recruits who made the lowest score, "superior" and "very superior" the uppermost fifth, and "average" the three-fifths in between.

As psychologists they should have known that "inferior" would carry an emotional significance; perhaps for army purposes this meaning was desirable. At any rate, by the same methods a fifth of the Fellows of the British Association or of the Immortals of the French Academy could be classed as inferior." So far as this particular result is concerned, therefore, the army results tell us nothing save that our citizenry is not intellectually homogeneous, and that some men are measurably more intelligent than others. This surely needs no demonstration by a corps of psychological savants nor does it justify doleful misgivings as to the working of democracy.

But what about the generalization that the army tests showed half of the population to be less than thirteen years in mental age? What may we expect of voters so infantile? The expression "mental age" is seductively simple; it seems so unambiguous. Mental age 10 seems to imply intellectual powers, judgment, and behavior like a ten-year-old. Now this is not what the tests prove and not what any competent psychologist from Binet onward has meant by the term. Mental age is merely a conventional expression indicating a certain rather arbitrary attainment in the tests. Such a rating may, indeed, be taken as determining the level of general intelligence of the person examined, but general intelligence is not the same thing as judgment or wisdom, though these interpenetrate; nor is general intelligence the sole factor determining behavior, though perhaps the chief.

Let the adult reader reflect that he himself probably ceased to develop in that somewhat mysterious group of functions lumped together under the caption of general intelligence, when somewhere between fourteen and eighteen years of age. Yet it is fairly certain that he does not behave like his adolescent self. Psychologists may demonstrate that he has not developed in intelligence; but this does not preclude development in judgment, in wisdom, and in knowledge, both theoretical and practical.

"Intelligence" and Intellectual Power

We must sharply distinguish between intelligence, which refers to native capacity, and intellectual power which depends in part upon experience.

Behavior is always the result of the reaction of experience upon this native capacity or intelligence. This is true of the idiot as of the genius. Native capacity or intelligence is almost entirely latent at birth and develops slowly with years; the extent of its development is relatively independent of the particular kinds of experience with which it interacts. Intellectual power, on the other hand, is strictly a function of two variables; the native intelligence and the number an quality of the experiences enjoyed.

The intelligence of the idiot ceases to develop at or before the level reached by normal children of three. With such an equipment, development in intellectual power is painfully slow and strictly limited in extent. The intelligence of the moron continues to develop to the level reached by normal children of seven to thirteen years. A considerable development in intellectual power is possible after the maximum development in intelligence has been attained but the extent is still strictly limited. The intelligence of the average normal person does not develop much beyond the level of the higher grade morons, but, present evidence sets no limit to the extent to which such an average person may continue to develop in intellectual power. William James thought that few such persons grew much after their twenty-fifth year and to the intuition of James we must give some weight; but experimental evidence we have none. The superior person and the genius continue to develop in intelligence for longer periods and in intellectual power indefinitely. (James himself to the time of his death was evidence that not all persons cease to grow at twenty-five.) The accompanying graph fails to show the relative speed with which the developments in both the vertical and horizontal directions take place; in general the speed increases as we pass from idiot through moron and average to superior and genius.

Once the distinction between intelligence (which is measured by tests) and intellectual power is grasped, we see that Mencken's statement that half the draft were not the intellectual equals of a thirteen year school-girl is almost a self reducing absurdity.

It is as inaccurate to say that fifty per cent of all American men are intellectually thirteen as that Mencken himself, with all his great gifts, is intellectually an adolescent eighteen; yet it is at this point, apparently, that the superior man who falls short of genius ceases to gain in intelligence.

But the contention that half of our population is feeble-minded is supposed to be based upon the official report to the Surgeon General of the army. Let us see. "If this definition," says the official report, referring to a widely current but tentative definition of feeble-mindedness, "can be interpreted as meaning any adult below the mental age of thirteen, almost half the white draft, 47.3 per cent, would have been classed as morons." (See Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, xv, 789.) The little word "if" has been pretty consistently overlooked. Of course such a result as this merely reduces to absurdity the proposed definition of feeble-mindedness and was recognized as doing so even by those who had originally proposed it. It is not for mere psychologists, at any rate, to indict half a nation.

How Many Are Feeble-minded?

If the feeble-minded do not number 47 per cent, how many do we have? The answer is peculiarly hard to give. The whole question of the definition of feeble-mindedness is in the melting pot as never before. Hereditary mental deficiency is universally recognized as the basic fact, but the general tendency at present seems to be to supplement purely psychological considerations with sociological, to revert somewhat to the familiar definition of the English Royal Commission which stressed the "inability to manage one's affairs with ordinary prudence."

Whatever the definition of feeble-mindedness, there is fair agreement that its diagnosis remains an art -- a matter of intuitive judgment, based upon a wide variety of factors, by a trained and qualified examiner. This it was impossible, for various reasons, to get under army conditions, and we have consequently no secure official basis upon which to estimate the number of mentally deficient in the country.

The discharges and rejections avowedly cover only a small per cent of the total. The instructions of the Provost Marshal General relative to rejection prior to muster provided, in effect, for the rejection of only the imbecile and idiot, that is, of the second and third degrees of feeblemindedness. The result was a large mass of unteachable soldiers who had, after considerable time and money had been spent on them, to be discharged.

The writer's own experience in supervising the examination of all low grade recruits who reached one large camp, confirmed by informal discussions with others who had like opportunity for observation, leads him to estimate that less than six or seven per cent of the adults of the country are definitely feeble-minded. Certainly no competent student would place the number at less than four per cent and few would place it at more than ten.

No Moron Bloc

The political problem raised by six or seven million morons in our population is not necessarily serious. They are too scattered to form a solid bloc and too unreliable to constitute very effective material for corrupt control. The real problem, which is social and industrial rather than political, is met when the high grade moron leaves school at about sixteen. Formerly a large per cent was absorbed by agriculture, but the coming of machinery to the farm has progressively restricted this field of usefulness. Fortunately the same movement has opened a new set of occupations in the city. A large part of the work required by the "Iron Man" calls for only moron intelligence. Indeed because of its monotony, such work is generally best done by one of that level.

As our factories are now organized, to be sure, this work, fit only for the moron, is often tied up with some really responsible job and makes the irksome and irritating part the work for a man of higher intelligence. But work requiring only moron intelligence is being increasingly separated from work requiring more, leaving the energies of the higher grade man free for more satisfying as well more valuable work.

The problem is not entirely solved, of course, when we find a suitable job for the defective. Obviously the foreman who supervises the work of the moron must be quite as different from his present-day prototype as the foreman today is from one of fifty years ago. But the development a new type of foreman is a fundamental problem in industry in any case.

A greater problem is the moron's inability to make social adjustments and it is obvious enough that while special institutional care of all our five million or more morons neither necessary nor wise, some form of social supervision and control will be increasingly necessary as these defectives are more and more huddled together in cities. Thus political problem raised by the feeble-minded is not in the capacity as citizens and voters but as wards, if not of state, at least of society.

The Perpetual Privates

The real problem for democracy is raised by the 22 per cent of men or "D" and "D-" intelligence, the so-called Inferiors. These people are not, most of them, feebleminded. How intelligent are they? The question is almost impossible to answer for lack of adequate objective standards with which to compare them. As has been pointed above, the mental age standard is profoundly misleading unless technically interpreted. Almost the only answer must be in terms of what these men can do.

Their army description may serve as an indication of their industrial capacity: " 'D' men are likely to be fair soldiers, but are usually slow in learning and rarely go above the rank of private. They are short on initiative and so require more than the usual amount of supervision."

In industry also they are the privates. They tend to gravitate to such occupations as laborers, tailors and tailors' assistants, blacksmiths and horseshoers, barbers, teamsters, hostlers, machine tenders, farm laborers, cobblers, general miners, concrete workers, boiler-makers and cooks, and these occupations to the lower grades and less responsible positions. It must be clearly understood that by no means all persons in these occupations are of "D" grade or bellow. On the contrary, in the army the middle score of all these occupations was in "C-," with very many well above. But these are the occupations which absorb most of the "D" men. Given time to learn their trade they make skillful workmen, reasonably rapid and trustworthy so long as they are given substantially no responsibility and are not asked to adapt themselves rapidly to new conditions. If they lack initiative and push, they are not on that account less highly regarded or paid since these qualities are not always deemed necessary in lesser employees.

The differences between "D" men and the majority of the "D-" and "E" men is one of degree. The latter require still more supervision and seldom attain high skill. Yet in the army only 1.75 per cent of the entire draft was officially regarded as unfit for regular service because of low mental level. Probably this is much too low; a number of considerations of a practical and politic sort held the recommendations for discharge to the lowest possible point. It remains true that all but a small per cent of the draft were regarded as possessing at least a bare possibility of some sort of usefulness. (See the official Memoirs, page 101.)

This is to be compared with the reckless statement of Mencken in the Baltimore Sun of January 30: " . . .to be exact, 22 per cent were such numskulls that they were fit only for certain kinds of low grade service. . . . That is to say, twenty-two in every hundred of the white drafted men were so stupid that it was impossible to make effective combatants of them. They could not be trusted to shoot and could not be trusted to run." Perhaps Mr. Mencken should leave statistics to less entertaining and more literal minds.

How Intelligent Should a Voter Be?

But what of political action? How much political acumen can we expect from the 22 per cent in the lowest range and from the 15 per cent in the next higher group? Without further evidence it is impossible to say. Concerning two vital factors we are still in the dark. It was pointed out above that a person's capacity for judgment, depending as it does partly upon experience, may continue to develop after the final mental level has been reached, much as an individual may increase in strength and muscular coordination after he has "got his growth." This is certainly true of superior persons and to a lesser degree of average persons. But if the mental growth be arrested at a very low level -- say at mental age seven or eight -- the intelligence factors necessary for the utilization of the materials of experience are lacking and no important development in judgment is possible. So far as the writer is aware no study has been made to determine the mental level essential to such progress in judgment with the passage of the years. As an estimate, a mental age level of at least ten years would seem essential, but we need more than guesses. While the problem is here stated untechnically, its precise formulation and experimental solution do not seem inherently difficult.

The second factor on which we need more information is only secondarily of psychological nature. How much intelligence does it take to be a voter? Must one be able to expound the Monroe Doctrine, understand the advantages of the Single Tax or master the intricacies of Schedule M in the tariff bill? Something like this seems to have been the assumption of Jeffersonian democracy; few people hold today to the doctrine of the "omnicompetent citizen" in its original purity. Yet to talk so blithely of political judgment without defining our terms is not very profitable. Certainly one cannot challenge the political capacity of persons at any given level of intelligence until this question is answered.

On the other hand, once we determine what type of problems a voter should show ability to solve as a minimum requirement for the ballot, the determination of the mental level necessary is comparatively simple. The time may well come when a voter's mental test will take the place of the so-called literacy tests now used in many states. It would be fairly easy to devise such a test which would be simple and uniform in its application, coach-proof, and mechanically and quickly graded. But until this is done, psychological test results, however numerous or certain, form an inadequate basis for calling democracy into question.